Tuesday, 10:00 am: Mother Nature has done it; we have our first snowfall for this, the beginning of our winter season. The birdfeeder will need to be filled, and I need to find our snow shovel. Now If I can just remember where I put it! The snow has lifted my wife’s spirits, she loves winter and snow. Her winter passion is to snowshoe in the woods, but for now there isn’t quite enough to go exploring.

Our front yard this morning

Luckily for me I finished working on my ham radio antenna yesterday. I had it up and down so many times I lost count. It is in good working order now, and probably no thanks to my skills, just persistence. I am just not very adept at getting things right the first time. I am accused of being an inveterate tinkerer.

Looking north toward Canada

My wife will be on the telephone shortly talking to her sister in Germany and telling her about the snow. We were briefly busy converting the amount into millimeters. I can’t say if they had snow in Berlin, but I suspect not. Dang! My wife found our snow shovel. It’s that time once again to bundle up. Ciao.

Current values from our wireless Davis Vantage-Pro weather station:

Temperature: 40° [F.]

Barometer: 30.154 & rising slowly

Humidity: 91%

Wind: NW at 2 mph light & variable

Visibility: ca. 3 miles under cloud base

Skies: 100% overcast

Precipitation: 1½ inch snow – now slowly melting

Since midnight:

Low temperature: 32.8° [F.] at 12:01 am

High wind: 10 mph 1:11 am

Monday, 8:30 am: Phew! What a windy weekend. Working outside was difficult enough, but driving was another can of worms. Saturday was definitely a day to drive with both hands on the steering wheel, and no time for sightseeing. Life in the semi-wilderness is not for the faint of heart. I guess the same could be said for people living in big cities.

Early morning frost

On Friday we called our local Maine Game Warden. Some intrepid sportsman was hunting on our property right behind a “No trespassing, no hunting . . .” sign, which was one of three identical signs. Even more oddly, his truck was parked directly in front of the sign. Apparently the hunter had literacy difficulties, or alternately chose to ignore all three signs. Luckily I don’t have print problems and promptly wrote down his license plate number and called the warden, who arrived about an hour later. Afterwards, I hope, the warden went to his house and raised his discomfort level a few notches.

Besides this event our lives are humming right along. The next big event is our drive to Bangor next week, where for a few hours we can experience city life, and leave our jeans and plaid flannel shirts at home.

Current values from our wireless Davis Vantage-Pro weather station:

Temperature: 28.8° [F.]

Barometer: 30.252 & rising slowly

Humidity: 59%

Wind: NW at 11 mph variable windiness

Visibility: > 3 miles under cloud base

Skies: ca. 75% overcast

Since midnight:

Low temperature: 28.4° [F.] at 6: 08 am

High wind: 22 mph at 2:59 am

Thursday, 8:45 am: This morning is delightfully cool with light frost on the ground. Our sweaters and jackets are lined up, ready to go. I was talking with a friend who recently returned from a vacation in Florida. He said they had a cold wave hit while he was there enjoying the sunshine. Chuckling he said it dipped down into the 80s, which for Floridians was cool. Being a robust Mainer he weathered it well.

My brother's view of a USMC CH46 over NYC (Photo by Frank Ames)

My brother and sister-in-law will be flying to Florida tomorrow. Instead of sitting on the beach sipping Margaritas with little paper umbrellas in their glasses and sand in their teeth; they will board a cruise ship and explore the Caribbean in air-conditioned comfort and probably with little umbrellas in their glasses too. Good sailing Frank and Kathy. Don't forget your plaid shorts and sun screen.

Our weekly trip into town yesterday was accompanied by a visit to my dentist for my regular cleaning appointment. My pearly-whites are now nearly pearly-white. Too many years of tea, coffee and soft drinks have left them with some staining. But they’re all mine. There’s no “store-bought” teeth in my mouth: Although The rest of me might be falling apart. Thankfully, I still have a few punches left on my lunch ticket.

Current values from our wireless Davis Vantage-Pro weather station:

Temperature: 38.4° [F.]

Barometer: 30.313 & rising rapidly

Humidity: 100%

Wind: Calm

Visibility: > 3 miles [ground fog earlier]

Skies: Generally clear with dissipating light ground fog

Precipitation: None

Since midnight:

Low temperature: 34.7° [F.]

High wind: 1 mph at 3:51 am

Saturday, 1:20 pm: Wet, and apparently more fickle, weather has struck again. It’s a tough call trying to guess what our weather will like in the next several hours. There are dark clouds all around us, but for the moment they’re not blowing in our direction. The NOAA weather radio station in Frenchville doesn’t mention anything that might be a concern for us. I doubt though I’ll go out in our garden and pretend I am a lightning rod. It’s better to leave well-enough alone, something I am not inclined to do with any regularity.

We had a quick trip into Caribou this morning for a vet visit. Our little old senior Sheltie, Tamara, who will be 17 years old in a few weeks, had problem with her right rear leg. Apparently she pulled a muscle and had some difficulty walking and some very obvious discomfort. We feared the worst. Luckily she’s snoozing quietly and, we hope on the mend with several quiet days. Dogs have a design flaw; they can’t tell us what’s bothering them, or where they hurt. Our design flaw is; we guess at it and hope for the best. Sometimes nature is like that.

After spending an almost sleepless night nursing our ill dog my brains are about fried. The high winds and driving rain didn’t help much. I thought life in the country was supposed to be more bucolic; not last night, anyway. Now I have to make sure I’ve crossed my “T”s and dotted my “I”s.

Current values from our wireless Davis Vantage-Pro weather station:

Temperature: 61.3° [F.]

Barometer: 29.404 & steady

Humidity: 72%

Wind: Calm

Visibility: > 3 miles under cloud base

Skies: 100% overcast

Precipitation: .50 inch – rain

Since midnight:

Low temperature: 60.7° [F] at 8:8:07 am

High wind: 27 mph at 3:23 am

Sunday 8:55 am: We’ve had lots of rain the past few days. On Friday we had 1.2 inches, and Saturday .1 inch, for a storm total of 1.3 inches [ca. 33 mm]. Even our avid local sportsmen were nowhere to be seen on Friday. We were also nowhere to be seen; staying inside looked to be our best choice, and our driest option too. We also fired up our woodstove on Friday. Our home is nice and warm now.

During the recent heavy rainfall I dragged out [again] my collection of Truly Bad Cinema DVDs. My choices this time were decidedly dreadful; The Brainiac [Spain -1961] and Gammera the Invincible [Japan -1965], the latter starring Brian Donlevy, which I imagine, if he were still alive, would opt to forget. Such a sad swan song for his long acting career. Admittedly I like the fake special effects and miniatures this Japanese studio goes all out to create on a next-to-nothing budget. I think the same guy who played Godzilla also played Gammera, they just swapped ridiculous costumes. Naturally Tokyo gets leveled and set ablaze when Gammera gets seriously annoyed with them.

Later today we’ll be driving over to New Brunswick for a quiet dinner at our local German restaurant. My wife is German after all, so we keep those connections alive and well. Besides I like schnitzel too. That’s it for today from the northern front; we’re digging in for the winter and dusting off our snowshoes . . . Vorwärts, if you get the subtext!

Current values from our wireless Davis Vantage-Pro weather station:

Temperature: 42° [F.]

Barometer: 29.794 & steady

Humidity: 100%

Wind: Calm

Visibility: > 3 miles under cloud base

Skies: ca. 90% overcast & patchy fog

Precipitation: None - light ground frost

Since midnight:

Low temperature: 33.7° [F.] at 6:34 am

High wind: 3 mph at 12:58 am

Sunday, 7:25 am: It’s cool, clear and crisp. That sounds like fall to me. Of course in northern Maine that could apply to most seasons. Our usual amount of work has been slowly changing, but not clearing brush. There’s always a lot to cut and later try to figure out whether to burn it, or run it through our chipper-shredder. At least when we have snow cover all that will abruptly end, but the other work with home and pets will continue.

Our firewood appears to be seasoned enough that creosote will not be a problem. It’s had all summer to dry out. Our stove and chimney have been cleaned with our chimneysweep equipment. They are, for the moment, clean. My chimney cleaning skills have improved over the past nine years. By now I’ve lost my ineptness [I am good at that] and I don’t have wire brushes and fiberglass rods rolling off of our two-story roof anymore. Fortunately I never rolled off the roof – not yet anyway. Ouch! I don't want to be part of the food-chain just yet.

It’s hunting season once again, and hunters with their orange vests are all over the woods. It sounds like a small intermittent war going on in the distance. So far this year, they’re not hunting directly in front of our house. From my observations of these guys, some are very lazy. It’s all they can do to get out of their truck, snuff out their cigarette and waddle and wheeze into the woods. This sort of eliminates the stealth and cunning skills that are part of hunting. There are, it seems, no Daniel Boones around here. Of course this is a very biased conversation with myself. Not surprisingly, it is also one-sided, and I always like my own answers.

Current values from our wireless Davis Vantage-Pro weather station:

Temperature: 32.5° [F.]

Barometer: 30.116 & rising slowly

Humidity: 80%

Wind: Calm

Visibility: > 3 miles

Skies: Clear

Precipitation: None

Since midnight:

Low temperature: 30.3° [F.] at 5:28 am

High wind: 12 mph at 12:56 am

Wednesday, 10:45 am: I think autumn is here. Leaf-peeping is rapidly coming to an end here in the Saint John Valley. Work around the house has been changing according to the cooling weather. Hopefully, not so soon, we’ll be waist deep in snow. Well my wife’s waist; I am a bit taller and it would have to be very severe to get up to my waist.

Sputnik 1 -- NASA Photo Archive

Wow! Fifty years ago this week the Soviet Union launched Sputnik. I remember it as a kid growing up in Phoenix, Arizona. I remember my father and most of our adult [I use the term “adult” loosely] male neighbors, were very concerned about the Russian space program. The next thing you know; Russian paratroopers would be landing on our roofs and in our gardens, such as they were at the time in the desert. I could only visualize Russian MiGs screaming overhead [they were pretty cool jets] taking out Luke Air Force Base to the west. I had no idea where they would come from. But my father and most of our neighbors were sure they were up to no good. Those crafty Reds! The next thing you know we’d be eating beets and cabbage and wearing very ill-fitting and unfashionable clothes. I went to Catholic school, so being an unfashionable seven year old kid wasn’t much of an issue for me. But a cabbage-based gruel, that’s a bit gassy for me. It’s surprising how much fear Joe McCarthy and others of his ilk foisted on America. And it’s even more surprising how many people believed it. I have a difficult enough time using the Latin-based alphabet, but the Cyrillic alphabet. Luckily, 1950s America weathered the alleged “Red Menace". What next; Yuri Gagarin? By the way the term Beatnik is derived from Sputnik. Beatnik was the term the press called them. They referred to themselves as Beats. Maybe they were in league with the 1950s communists? Ah but no, communists didn’t have espresso. They just were not cool enough.

Now if the above was not weather the following certainly must be . . .

Current values from our wireless Davis Vantage-Pro weather station:

Temperature: 56.7° [F.]

Barometer: 30.157 & falling slowly

Humidity: 84%

Wind: SSW at 5 mph – light & variable

Visibility: > 3 miles

Skies: ca. 90% overcast

Precipitation: None:

Since midnight:

Low temperature: 46.7° [F.] at 12:50 am

High wind: 13 mph at 10:40 am